Pencil
by sein Henker
Summary: Lily and Petunia fight about small things. Or not so small things.


Title: Pencil  
Summary: Lily and Petunia fight about small things. Or not so small things.  
Rating: T  
Word Count: 1475  
Other Chapters: No.  
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related trademarks belong to J.K. Rowling. I do not in any way profit from the use of these trademarks.  
Pairings: None; Teasing discussion of Lily Evans/OMC  
Contains: cultural isolation  
Warnings: bullying

"So do you take A-levels?" Petunia asked, not looking up from her algebra problem. The snow was coming down hard outside, so Petunia was catching up on her coursework, and Lily was finally getting around to writing a letter she'd been meaning to send since she got home.

"... Sort of," Lily said, and she did look up from the letter she was writing. "Basically, yeah."

"In magic?"

Lily shrugged. "I wouldn't be taking them in French or history, would I?"

Petunia shrugged. "I never see you study."

"I study in my room."

"Why? Can't let me and mum and dad know your secrets?"

"I just prefer my room! Come off it!" She shook her head and looked back to her letter, and Petunia looked back to her homework, and they both tried to give each other the silent treatment. They'd never been very good at that.

Petunia broke first. "So you take them in... potions and curses and—"

"No!" Lily said, a little bit offended. "That's terrible! I take Defence Against the Dark Arts!"

"But then other people do take Dark Arts?"

Lily froze. Her eyes closed for a second, but then she looked back down to her letter. "Not as a class," she said, with what she hoped was a tone of finality, and she picked her ink pen back up and started writing again.

"They just study it on their own time?" Petunia pressed on, either not noticing or not caring that Lily didn't want to talk about it.

Lily shrugged. "I suppose... Sometimes certain families pass it down to their children..." She shook her head. "Look, it's weird. And most normalwitches and wizards—"

"There aren't any normal witches and wizards!" Petunia said, laughing cruelly. "You're all freaks!"

"Oh, stop it with that, will you?!"

"Why should I?" She scoffed. "You're writing on parchment with a quill. Use a pen and notebook paper like a normal person."

"I am a normal person, Tuney! And at Hogwarts, normal people use quills and parchment!"

"That's stupid. You don't have to do it just because everyone else does." She slammed her pencil down on the table and flicked it over to Lily. "Finish your letter in that."

Lily stared at it for a second.

"What? Have you forgotten how to use it?"

"No," Lily said. "I'm not stupid. I just don't see why I should."

"Because there are a thousand of them lying around the house and you can just erase if you make a mistake?"

Lily worried her lower lip between her teeth for a moment. Then she put her quill into its ink pot and pushed the set toward Petunia. "Only if you finish your maths with my quill."

"No," Petunia said immediately. "That's completely daft. I wouldn't be able to erase if I made a mistake, and nobody writes with quills any more!"

"And nobody in the wizarding world uses pencil!"

"You aren't in the wizarding world!" Petunia said.

Lily couldn't respond to that. She wasn't in the wizarding world. And it wasn't like she'd forgotten that. She was genuinely glad to be home for the holidays. She loved Hogwarts, but she missed her parents and her sister when she was away. She'd had to stay at school for the holidays once, and it had been without a doubt the worst Christmas of her life, even though she and the other Gryffindor girls who'd stayed had done their very best to cheer each other up.

She pushed the pencil back toward Petunia. "You need it, then," she said. "So that you can erase if you make a mistake."

"It's the 20th century, Lily," Petunia said. "We have more than one pencil in the house." She rolled her eyes, but she took her pencil back, all the same, and finished the problem she'd been working on.

Lily pulled her quill and ink back to a convenient location.

"So who are you writing to that would never forgive you if you wrote in pencil?"

"Is that important?" Lily asked.

Petunia smirked. "What's his name? Does he know you come from a normal family?"

"Stop it!"

"He doesn't, does he?!"

"He's a muggle-born too, alright?!" Lily blurted out. She hadn't meant to even confess that she was writing to a boy, but she'd said it before she could stop herself.

Petunia stared at her blankly for a moment, then seemed to decide that she believed her. "Oh, good," she said. "So at the wedding, I won't have to worry about you forgetting to explain any freak traditions to me."

Lily looked down at the letter, blushing furiously and not entirely sure why. He was good looking enough, but she didn't think he was really interested in her that way, and she'd never seriously entertained any idea of the two of them getting together. "I'm not seeing him," she said. "He's just a friend."

"Don't try it," Petunia said. "You're writing him over the holiday and blushing furiously. I suppose if you're going to marry a freak, it's better it be one from a normal family." She looked back to her coursework, but kept speaking. "Tell all, then. What's his name, where's he from, what's he look like..."

"His name is Idris Powell. He's from Swansea. He's a year ahead of me and in Ravenclaw and we're just friends, so you can stop worrying about our wedding."

"Oh, well, excuse me." Petunia didn't sound at all like she was really sorry. "I don't know what a Ravenclaw is, but if he lives in Swansea and he's from a normal family, why are you writing in quill on parchment? I suppose you're going to have the letter carried to him by bird-mail, too?"

"Owl-mail is faster! It would take days just to get there by muggle post! I could have a reply tomorrow with Elton."

"It would look considerably cleaner if you'd write it in pencil."

"Are you on about that again?!"

"Well, are you embarrassed of us, Lily?" Petunia asked. "I wouldn't mind you being a freak half so much if it didn't have to consume every aspect of your life in the most daft ways! It's like you people just sit around looking at things thinking 'How can we make this freakier?' And you won't even write to kids from normal families in the normal way!"

"Pencils just don't feel right any more! They're too thick! They feel weird when I hold them!" Lily wasn't sure how true that was, but she was equally certain that she wasn't embarrassed of being muggle-born and certainly not around Idris. There were certain situations where she knew it wasn't a good idea to flaunt the information, but letters to other muggle-borns were hardly those sorts of situations. She and Idris talked all the time 'muggle-born things,' as their pure-blood friends called them. One of her favourite things about him was that she could reference muggle pop-culture to him, or talk about pure-blood supremacy with him, or eve make muggle-born jokes, and things never got awkward. He alone, of all her friends, had known the very first time he'd heard it why her owl was named Elton. Idris was just really refreshing to be around and to talk to, as much when she was at home as when she was at school.

She was almost certain, though, that if he were to get a letter from her in pencil, on notebook paper, through the muggle post, he'd find it every bit as ridiculous as she'd feel writing and sending it. Performative muggleness. Was that even a word? That probably wasn't a real word. He'd see it for what it was, though, whether or not there was a word for it. Whatever their parents and siblings did, muggle-borns wrote on parchment with quills. They just did.

"If I had muggle friends," Lily said, "I'd write to them the muggle way. I just... don't really have any muggle friends any more." She'd had plenty during her first year, and she'd sorely neglected to write them. She'd grown apart from them, in the way that one usually does grow apart from childhood with whom one has been separated for a long time and no longer has much in common with.

"Of course you don't have muggle friends any more," Pentunia sneered. "You're a freak, you're always running around with Severus Snape, and everyone thinks you got some special scholarship to some posh boarding school just because you're so smart and special. I wouldn't even talk to you if I didn't have to live with you."

That did it. Lily stood up and grabbed her unfinished letter and her writing equipment. "Why do you always have to be so mean?" she asked, before turning and half-running up to her bedroom. There was a reason she did all of her studying up there.


End file.
